Sunday 20 October 2013

A VBCW Patrol Encounter with Chain of Command

I have mentioned before that I was intending to use the TFL Chain of Command rules for A Very British Civil War. Well I managed to try this out last week and I reckon it worked very well, especially for a first attempt.

I played the first 'Patrol' scenario using two forces BUF and Anglican. Each side had two sections of uniformed militia with a rifle and Lewis gun team each plus an un-uniformed militia section (just two rifle teams) and two senior leaders. There were no supports; I do plan to paint up a few British regulars for extra variety and some support elements when I get a chance. The game played very smoothly; the only real change I made to the standard rules was to allow for stoppage of Lewis guns if they roll more 1's than 6's (a rule borrowed from Mud & Blood).

The critical moment of the game was when the BUF advanced one of their rifle teams to try to outflank the Anglicans 'cowering' behind one of the hedges, while leaving their Lewis gun team behind in one of the buildings. That meant bearing down on one of the Anglican's jump-off point. The Anglicans still had a section in reserve and, surprisingly enough, they popped out from behind the hedge to ambush those poor fascists. Even though their Lewis gun did stick (!) it was still pretty devastating and in the next phase they were able to get the BUF team in close combat almost wiping them out. The BUF men with the Lewis gun could only look on helplessly and then they were thoroughly outgunned by the Anglicans behind the hedge (who in truth were pretty luck). After that it was only going to end one way.

So its 1-0 to the Bish's men and I look forward to having a chance to give it another go soon (hopefully in another week or two). The only slight comment on the rules I had was that hardly any of the units seemed to accumulate much shock; there were rather more kills and what little shock there was seemed to be rallied off quite easily. It could just have been a bit of a quirk of the dice; we'll see how it goes next time.

Final position of the patrol markers & jump-off points (blue for Anglicans, red for BUF).
The BUF appeared to have the better of the patrol phase

Un-uniformed Anglican militia. In the background you can just make out their uniformed colleagues
(sorry, focus not great)

The BUF advance to outflank Anglicans cowering behind the hedge

...and are ambushed by another Anglican section deploying 

After defeating the first BUF section, the Bish's men advance toward the buildings. 

They will in fact end up behind this BUF section - not good